Daily Herald opinion: Remembering Virginia Halas McCaskey
As the NFL kicked off Super Bowl LIX, the pomp and circumstance paused for a moment to honor Bears owner Virginia Halas McCaskey, who died Thursday at the age of 102.
A moment of silence before the biggest game of the season offered a fitting tribute to a woman who rarely sought the spotlight, but was one of the last links to the birth of the National Football League.
Her father, George Halas, helped found the league in 1920. He bought the Decatur Staleys in 1921, moving the team to Chicago and renaming it the Bears.
From the start, his daughter had a front-row seat to football history.
As a toddler, Virginia McCaskey accompanied her father on the 1925 barnstorming tour after the team signed superstar halfback Red Grange, a Wheaton High School alum. In 1932, she attended the first unofficial NFL championship game.
McCaskey was a busy mother of 11 children raising her family in Des Plaines when her brother died in 1979, leaving her the only remaining heir to the Bears.
Thrust into the role, she became owner in 1983 when her father died. Two years later, the Bears captured their lone Super Bowl win.
In 2007, with snow falling on Soldier Field, McCaskey accepted the Halas Trophy, wearing the same fur coat her mother wore when the Bears won the 1963 NFL Championship, after the Bears beat the New Orleans Saints to return to the Super Bowl.
How many teams have that kind of history?
In a male-dominated league full of owners who bought a team as a side venture, McCaskey kept the Bears a family business. Three of her children still have active roles in the organization.
Unlike many current owners, McCaskey didn’t hog the spotlight or clamor for attention. She preferred to work behind the scenes and let others in the organization enjoy the limelight.
It’s fitting the final game she witnessed was a win, and icing on the cake that it was against the hated Green Bay Packers.
Her legacy, however, goes beyond wins and losses.
For more than four decades, McCaskey led the Bears with dignity and class.
In 2023, she was a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but the honor eluded her.
We hope that changes. Perhaps 2025 will see the woman nicknamed “Mama Bear” take her place in the hall with a bust alongside her father’s. It’s too bad that she didn’t live to see it.
Now, for the first time in history, a Halas isn’t leading the Bears. The year ahead looks to be a dramatic one for the team, with a new coach and a potential decision on a new stadium.
As Bears officials weigh the decisions to come, they would be wise to ask themselves: What would Virginia do?